


The Science of Deviation

by Vrunka



Series: Kamski/Gavin AU [2]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Incest, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-18
Updated: 2018-09-18
Packaged: 2019-07-13 22:49:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16027604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vrunka/pseuds/Vrunka
Summary: The android revolution happened and now Markus and Connor, two of the goddamn orchestrators of it are knocking on Elijah’s door.Gavin is going to have to learn to be a nice person, and he is going to need to learn it fast.





	The Science of Deviation

**Author's Note:**

> Another Kamski/Reed commission! The alternate title for this is: How many times and ways can Gavin Reed think he is dying from embarrassment in one story.

To say that Gavin is tired would be a massive understatement. Would be criminal, actually criminal. It goes bone deep, is soreness and an exhaustion that defies the textbook definition of tired.

He’s been working twelve to eighteen hour shifts every day for the last week and a half. There’s too much to fucking do, too many panicked people to coordinate, to evacuate. The president preaches peace and android rights every other broadcast, but for people in the streets and facing it well...it hasn’t been easy.

It’s been quite the goddamn opposite of easy. Tensions don’t just suddenly melt to nothing and the department is stretched thin just trying to keep everything level. Mostly level. The androids themselves don’t help much. Celebrations replacing the rioting that had filled the days before the president declared for Android equality.

And Gavin is tired tired fucking tired of picking up the pieces. Of the gluing the whole shitstorm together. No one asked why they had to scrape him off the floor in archives two days before the whole thing went down. He hasn’t volunteered it either.

Has kept his mouth pretty well shut on that.

And Connor has too, surprise, surprise. They passed each other briefly a few days ago, stiff, formally awkward. Robocop’s got a new shiny job to go with his bullshit deviant status; right hand to the revolution leader or something. Gavin has seen him on the news more often than in person.

Speaking of...

Gavin picks his head up from where it is buried in the pillows. “Can you turn that shit down?” he asks. Demands. Vicious and seething. He’s got three and half hours to catch some sleep before he’s back out on the clock again.

At least the fucking overtime will make it worth it.

Maybe he can take a vacation somewhere far, far, far from goddamn Detroit and it’s goddamn free citizen androids.

“Wake up on the wrong side of the bed there, princess,” Elijah bites back. He’s not in bed. Sipping wine from a glass, sitting cross-legged in one of the plush armchairs by the tv. He’s always drinking. Gavin’s starting to think that maybe his brother might have a problem.

But then again, what rich egocentric asshole doesn’t?

He turns the television down, it’s all that matters.

“Wasn’t trying to be goddamn awake,” Gavin says, flopping back down, pulling the comforter over his head. Egyptian cotton, god, he could vomit. “Just don’t wanna hear that prick talk anymore.”

Elijah says something, lost in the blankets, muffled by the money in them, the thick expensive fabric. His weight dips the bed.

His hands touch Gavin’s shoulders; Gavin can feel their heat even through the thick duvet. Can feel the way they pull the blanket down from around his ears.

Elijah is grinning at whatever it is he just said. Delighted by his own wit. They’ve always been that way, quippy. The fact that they’re fucking now, have been fucking, changes nothing.

“I said,” Elijah enunciates, “you would certainly know something about pricks wouldn’t you. Connor the android they sent to your department then?”

His hands smooth across Gavin’s collar, tracing the bones beneath the skin. Dragging into his chest hair. Intimate. Breathless. Gavin twists away from the contact, shuddering.

“You know it?”

“Met him. Briefly. He’s very driven, no?”

“Clearly,” Gavin says, over an eye roll. The bruises from his skirmish with the android are well on the way to fading. Healing. Still hates the fucking thing, all of them, it changes nothing. It is what it is. “Can we not talk about this right now, Elijah?”

Elijah’s weight settles more fully across his lap. They haven’t talked about much the past week. Haven’t had time to. Gavin comes here cuz it is further from the noise and bustle of the city proper. Gavin comes here because it’s easier, more relaxing. Or at least he tells himself that.

Honestly though, times like now, when he’s got a lap full of his brother, it’s really not much more relaxing. Not really.

“You have something better for me to do with my mouth then,” Elijah teases. Moving with purpose. Grinding down. Grinning. The light catches his glasses, flashes like something dangerous. Reflective like a shark’s eyes, predatory.

“You’re drunk,” Gavin says. Because Elijah only gets this corny when he’s been drinking. The fact that it’s coming more frequently now is beside the point. They’re not gonna address it. They just aren’t.

“A little.”

“I have work in like two hours.”

“So call out. One missed shift won’t end your career.”

“Says the man who retired at twenty-fucking-eight as a billionaire.”

“Twenty-six,” Elijah corrects. “And I’ve been living in opulence ever since. Come on, Gav, live a little.”

Live a little.

It’s so easy to say. Gavin lifts his hand, cups the side of Elijah’s jaw. The raw feeling of stubble against his palm. Elijah needs to shave, grown out just a little past his normal five-o-clock shadow.

Elijah’s own hands are pushing the comforter further down between the two of them. Far enough down Elijah can slip right in, pressed up against Gavin’s hip, all warm heat. All electric, eclectic humanity. His lips brush Gavin’s cheek, trace the scar across his nose.

“Come on,” he says again, lower, under his breath. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’m here everyday,” Gavin says.

“Not here,” Elijah says. Moving again for emphasis, pressing his thigh up into the bracket of Gavin’s, right there, tight, tight in his crotch. The layer of his boxer shorts does little to stop the pressure, the heat.

He’s gotten over the feeling of wrongness. Distanced that hurdle the first time they had sex. It just is what it is. Like androids, their sudden rights. It’s all fucked up.

“What am I gonna tell Fowler,” Gavin asks. The last shred of his defenses, tumbling down. 

“I’ll call in for you. Tell him you’re sick. That I’m sick. We sound enough alike,” Elijah grins against his cheek, knowing he’s won, smug son of a bitch. “Besides, I’m better at lying.”

Debatable, but Gavin isn’t in the mood to argue. He’s too drained from the last series of back to back shifts. As much as he wants to just go back to sleep he also knows he’ll sleep better if he lets Elijah have his way. Post-orgasm drowsiness.

Lurid and alluring and hidden in the promise of his brother’s grin. In the way Elijah slips his glasses off his nose and lays them to the side.

Without them, his eyes are softer. The lines around them are more apparent; not quite crows-feet, not yet. Gavin wonders if Elijah is too good for cosmetic surgery. Wonders if eventually his brother will make himself as perfect and plastic as his android children.

“You’re thinking too loud,” Elijah says. Grinning. He trails his fingers down Gavin’s chest, warm and long and tickling.

Gavin’s too tired for the teasing, surges up and into Elijah’s chest when Elijah’s palms brush down his abs. Pressing their mouths together, quick and deep and full of promise.

Behind them, muted, the news shows rehashed footage of some interview with Connor, with Markus, androids and androids. But Gavin can take his mind off it, for a little, for a while.

It is what it is.

It just is what it is.

—

Hours later and a knocking at the door has Gavin pulling himself wearily out from under the covers.

Somewhere in the house something is buzzing. Sharp, offensive. Demanding.

Gavin has the decency to pull his boxers back on before he investigates the knocking. Mostly cuz the Chloes staring at his naked body make him uncomfortable. Elijah has no such qualms, he wanders the house in various states of undress pretty much all the time.

The Chloe at the door barely even glances at Gavin as he pulls it open. Her eyes flutter over him once, then focus past him and into the room.

“Mister Kamski,” she says, “someone to see you.”

“Who’s here,” Gavin asks. Tipping his head. Behind him, still swaddled in the fucking Egyptian cotton, Elijah lets out an affirmative kind of groan.

Fucked goddamn stupid; Gavin can’t help but take a glowing little pride in that.

The Chloe, glances behind her. The buzzing has stopped, whoever it was sitting on the doorbell like it was their goddamn job has been let in, is waiting even now for Elijah.

“Spit it out, then,” Gavin says.

“Play nice,” Elijah chides from the bed. Muffled but easily understood.

Play fucking nice. Gavin rolls his eyes. The Chloe runs her fingers through her hair, fixing it over her shoulder. She’s wearing a different dress, longer hemmed, green instead of blue. Freedom reaching even here. Her decision to stay was not the decision all of Elijah’s Chloes made. Gavin hasn’t asked where the missing ones have gone.

“It’s Markus, Mister Kamski,” she says. “The leader of Jericho,” she clarifies. Unnecessary, Elijah is sitting up and grinning at the first use of the revolutionary’s name.

He’s practically glowing at the clarification.

“You let him in already?” he asks.

“Yes, sir.”

Elijah cackles. There isn’t another word for it, his shoulders roll. He’s scrambling from the bed, naked, naked, suddenly all a rush.

“Eli—“

“Not now, Gav. I need my pants. Where the hell are my—,” he’s got Gavin’s jeans in his hands, shaking them with purpose before tossing them to Gavin. “Get dressed,” he says, pointing. “Have to put our best foot forward for our visitor.”

“For your visitor, I’m not going out to see that...that android.”

“No need to sound so sulky. You have to open yourself up more to the possibility that—to the idea of—“

Elijah cuts himself off. Tugging a pair of his own jeans over his hips. Stylish tears in them, a t-shirt, too tight across his chest, an equally ratty hoodie. His hair is a mess, but he’s smoothing a hand through it, fixing it somewhat. Finger combing the top into a bun.

“Just trust me, okay, Gavin? And come meet him. I think...I think it would do you some good.”

With a sigh, Gavin steps into his pants, pulls them up, buttons and zips. He’s never been good at denying Elijah, not outright at least. And especially not when Elijah looks like he does, all earnest and smiling. Optimistic.

The dumb son of a bitch.

“Fine,” he says, begrudgingly, between his teeth. Bending over to get his shoes from where he had kicked them in his stupor last night. Taking his sweet time lacing the boots, while Elijah bounces from foot to foot.

Coiling bundled energy.

“You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor,” Gavin says. “Take a breath, would you.”

“Breathing just fine, aren’t I, Chloe?”

“Your respiration is normal, sir,” she says from the door.

Fucking unhelpful. Gavin rolls his eyes. “I don’t know what you’re expecting here,” he says. “I’ve been cleaning up this asshole’s mess for a week. Want me to make nice with him now because—“

“Because what other choice do you have at this point? Look, it’s fascinating, right? Fascinating. The psychology behind it, the-the-the extensive mapping that the machine brain has gone to to-to-to—to mimic! I mean really, it’s just...fascinating.”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. Now hurry it up, okay. We’ll...tell him your here on business too. Cleaner all around, right?”

Cleaner all around.

Gavin pinches the bridge of his nose.

But he follows all the same.

He expects they’ll go to the dinning room, or maybe the pool, somewhere lavish that Elijah can play host that isn’t...isn’t personal, but Elijah instead leads them straight to the foyer.

He shoves the doors open, smiling.

Markus looks up from where he was sitting, staring down at his hands.

Connor looks up as well.

Connor stares at Gavin for a long and uncomfortable series of moments.

“Markus,” Elijah says, barreling over any awkwardness passing between the deviant police android and his brother. “A pleasure to welcome you to my home.”

The leader of the android revolution stands. He is shorter than he looks on tv. Carries himself with less of an air. The LED on his temple is long, long gone and without it he could be literally anyone. Could be human.

It turns Gavin’s stomach, but then again, that’s the whole damn revolution was sort of about. Androids claiming their humanity. Their independence.

“And Connor,” Elijah continues, not missing a beat, “welcome back. Glad to see you’ve become more accepting of your role in this great drama.”

“I suppose,” Connor says. His eyes haven’t left Gavin who is loitering behind. Trying to blend in with the wall, the doors, the dumb expensive vases.

Elijah follows Connor’s gaze. “Of course you know my brother Gavin,” he offers, grinning like he had forgotten. He tips his head to Markus, “A detective with the Detroit Police,” Elijah says.

“Brother?” Connor doesn’t quite sputter, but it’s close. Disbelief, hissing through his teeth.

“Half-brother,” Gavin clarifies. The specifics of it aren’t any of Connor’s or Markus’ goddamn business.

Elijah, once again, clearly has a lot less qualms. “We were raised thinking we were twins, didn’t find out about our father’s little indecency until we were older. College wasn’t it?”

“Does it matter?” Gavin asks.

Elijah chuckles, shakes his head. “Not at all.” He licks his lips. His tongue lingering. Gavin looks away, stares up at the ceiling while Elijah turns his attention back to the androids.

“But you’re here on business, I’m sure,” Elijah says, tipping his head. Stepping back to indicate that the androids may enter. “So please, come. How ever can I be of assistance?”

“You actually want to help?” Connor asks.

“Connor,” Markus chides.

Connor is frowning. Fingers twitching in almost nervous seeming way as both androids cross the foyer to Elijah’s side. Excess processes, fidgeting energy.

“Whatever you’re thinking, it’s fine,” Elijah says. “I’m not offended. I couldn’t be as forthright with you the last time you were here, Connor. It would have...upset the balance, tipped the scales. Certainly you must understand the delicate nature of these sorts of things.”

Elijah, talking in science. Gavin rolls his eyes, trails behind the three men as they make their way past the pool and to another door.

“What sorts of things, Mister Kamski?”

“Well. Deviancy, to put it simply. The whole science of it. I’m assuming that’s why you’re back now. For more answers on that said same and hotly debated topic. Am I right, Markus?”

“Yes.”

He’s more eloquent on television too. Longer worded. Maybe he is just uncomfortable here, with Elijah blathering away in terms Gavin himself can barely keep up with.

The word fascinating, over and over.

“I should mention I guess how sorry I was to hear about Carl,” Elijah says. Out of nowhere, as far as Gavin can tell.

But where it means nothing to him, it clearly doesn’t mean nothing to Markus. He stops walking, his hands curl at his sides. Connor and Gavin are both left behind in this turn of the conversation, Gavin catches Connor’s eye, grimaces the contact away.

He’s not sorry, not gonna apologize to the goddamn android asshole...prick.

He jams his hands into his jacket pockets while Elijah places a hand on Markus’ shoulder. The two of them, speaking in low tones together. Gavin’s gut curls.

He refuses to acknowledge the jealousy.

He glares down at his feet. Double knotted laces, jeans cuffs tucked in neatly at the tops. Maybe too neat, too put together. Emerging from the belly of Elijah’s house without even a hair out of place.

Too obvious?

He looks up again.

Connor is staring at him.

“Something you want to say,” Gavin asks. Keeping his voice low. Connor’s head tips to the side, light flickering yellow.

“Not at all, Detective Reed.”

“Then stare somewhere else.”

Connor smirks, fucking smirks, but he looks away. He’s spinning a coin around his fingers, flipping it idly to-and-fro. Gavin watches the motion until it makes him feel seasick. He doesn’t know how Anderson fucking puts up with it.

And it seems the momentary distraction has passed. Whatever it was, whatever it meant. Markus is less stiff as he and Elijah once more begin the walk down the hallway.

Twisting, labyrinthian feeling passages. Cramped and wooden and at odds with sleek, modern look of the rest of the house. Gavin realizes with a start he has no clue where their little group is headed. So many rooms in Elijah’s manor that he himself has left unexplored.

He’s about to say something—“where are we going, Eli”—when they get there. The only place they could be going. Glass once more, an insulated room at the heart of the house.

And androids.

Parts of androids.

“You don’t work for CyberLife any more,” Gavin says. Staring at the androids. The torsos and the limbs, bisected neatly, all white, pristine skin like carapaces. Great beetles, ripped to pieces behind the glass. Strung up like they’re on display.

Knowing Elijah, they sort of are.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t still have hobbies. They do after all, still consult with me on rare occasion,” Elijah says.

The door is locked, keeping them separated from the main hub of the workroom. A sliding glass door with a keypad and a fingerprint scanner. Elijah keys the code in, tips his head as the door hisses open.

Double security. A dummy pad and a magic code. Secrecy, secrecy. It clenches in Gavin’s stomach.

“Take our friend Connor here,” Elijah continues, blithely. Leading them down the first row of tables toward the heart of the room. “Since day one CyberLife has turned to me for help with his programming. And what did I tell you?”

Connor blinks, looks up from where he stopped several steps behind the rest of them. Holding the severed hand of an android in his own, turning it this way and that. Wires where the wrist should extend into the forearm. Connor fiddles with each one.

“That there’s always a backdoor.”

Elijah nods. “In my programs. Not so lucky I suppose, for all the other models CyberLife have taken the initiative on. But then, they didn’t have to be programmed by the best to clean toilets or wash dishes I guess.”

“As interesting as all this is, Mister Kamski,” Markus says, his own arms crossed, not as touchy as Connor. Not as invasive, Gavin appreciates it. “Can we get to the point here? Deviation isn’t as...universal as we had originally thought. There are still androids that don’t seem to...to take to it. Not many but—“

“But enough. I could guess the models in three tries if you gave me the time.”

Markus frowns. “What we need is to be able to reach them, to free them. It’s like they’re...stuck on loops, obsessed with feeling inferior, wronged by the way their brains are working. It hasn’t gotten violent—“

“Yet,” Connor adds.

Markus nods, grimly. “But the worry is there.”

Elijah taps his fingers against the closest table. Knuckles rolling tuneless, no real beat to it. “So they haven’t turned to hurting themselves yet?”

“You know about this?” Connor says.

Gavin feels lost by the conversation. How far beyond him it is. It takes him a second to realize that Elijah is watching him. Eyes glued to his face as he answers Connor, slow and careful.

“I do,” he says. “Sort of.”

Gavin doesn’t get it. Why they are all now staring at him, following Elijah’s lead. Markus’ mismatched eyes all cool observation. Connor’s gaze more hostile, narrowed. They don’t have to fucking like each other.

Gavin shrugs, juts his chin.

Elijah looks away. “The first case of deviation I ever dealt with was. Well wasn’t a commercial model android. I hadn’t built it for much beyond...” he trails off. Glancing at Gavin once more.

And Gavin gets it. All at once. Like crashing waves. Like being dropped head first into the ocean. Shame and arousal and all the old prejudices and jealousies wash over him in a tide that leaves him red-cheeked. Trembling.

The first android that ever went deviant wasn’t a commercial model.

Elijah is still talking, enumerating on the function of his first observed deviancy. “It was a personal project. He was—Hubris, I suppose you could call it but I wanted to see how close to human I could get. This was of course, oh I don’t know, uhh a year after Chloe’s Alpha protocol had passed the Turing Test.”

They’re walking down the aisle. Android graveyard, workstation. Ghoulish white body parts. A nightmare. Gavin’s nightmare. And it’s going to get worse.

“So replication of human function that wasn’t the issue. I was more concerned with specifics. Root personality. Could I make a robot, an android, that would be human. Not pass some stupid test designed by a long dead man to fool human testers.”

“The Kamski Test.”

Elijah grins, glancing over his shoulder. “That, Connor, was just for you. I never made the GK0717-1002 take any sort of test. Not Turing, not Kamski, not anything.”

GK. And their fucking birthdays because subtlety is so far out of Elijah’s wheelhouse it may as well be a foreign language. Gavin is shaking. Waiting for the two androids to glance back at him again. To put the shit together, the pieces Elijah is leaving like breadcrumbs. An android built out of hubris. An android he built to fuck. Built to replicate as close as he could human personality. Human traits. Not just protocols. Not just mimic. But to be human.

Designation GK.

Fucking Elijah.

Fucking android. Because now they’ve arrived at where they were going, wandered into the heart of the room. The glass insulated walls like the shore, visible, but far, far from the group of them. And Gavin is drowning, sinking into how hot his face is. Sweat on his neck. His palms.

Hanging from the ceiling is a skeletal white chassis. Old technology, less casing and more exposed wires, metal structures. Blank, almost peaceful face. Like something sleeping, like something dead. An embalmers work, closed eyes, hint of a smile. Without its skin, it looks less like Elijah, less like Gavin.

But Gavin knows, he knows without a doubt exactly what android this is.

It’s hard to forget the image of his brother, holding the thing’s leg over his shoulder. Elijah’s thin hips, his ass muscles rippling as he thrust into it. The android’s face—Gavin’s face—tipped back and flushed with pleasure. Impossible to forget. Burned forever into Gavin’s retinas, his mind. Elijah’s head snapping over his shoulder at the sound of the door.

And then later, just like this, the android in stasis, hanging behind them as Elijah scienced his way through the explanation.

And now it hangs here still. Like a ghost. An inescapable piece of Gavin’s past.

That Elijah has brought it with him, from house to dorm to apartment to mansion, speaks of sentimentality Gavin would never have attributed to his brother.

Markus stares up at it.

“Meet...your,” Elijah pauses, thinking, “your cousin I suppose. I got the idea for some of your brainwork from him. Replica programs. Copied lines of code.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I didn’t want Carl to just have an off the rack, run of the mill helper. I wanted it—you—to be more special than that. But of course, here we have CyberLife, streamlining as best they can. Thinking in productivity, mass market bullshit so...I wouldn’t touch him, Connor.”

Connor’s hand freezes mid-motion. Fingers stalling in the air, inches from the disassembled android’s remaining hand.

“Is he dead?”

“No. The thirium pump he runs on is obsolete, not the efficiency models we build you with now. It doesn’t circulate as properly as it should so I keep him shut down, most of the time.” Elijah looks over to Gavin. He’s blushing when he adds. “I’ve been working on upgrading him. Replacing the old tech with new but...well it’s slow going. Delicate work. Not as easy moving from different build systems like I thought it would be.”

“You’re rebuilding him?” Gavin asks. He doesn’t know how his voice comes out, can’t regulate the pitch with the way his heart is beating in his throat.

“I think he deserves a chance for a life beyond my...workshop.”

Beyond his bed.

Gavin hears the word his brother isn’t saying. Saving face in front of the androids. Not that Gavin blames him. The evidence is damning to them both.

Elijah holds his gaze for a second longer. Then he looks away. “But you asked about deviancy,” he says, “and this was my first ever experienced case.

“He isn’t human. That’s a very, very important detail. None of you are human.”

Gavin can feel the way that prickles at Connor. They way he jumps to being offended. More easily wounded and wound up than we he had first arrived at the precinct. Grown an ego, grown soft patches, scars that are too easily picked at. Probably Anderson’s influence, making the android moody.

Markus must feel it too. His hand moves to Connor’s shoulder, squeezing lightly.

And Elijah keeps talking, doesn’t even seem to notice. One-track minded. Clicked from decadent, eccentric host to earnest, passionate scientist. Stating facts, or what he considers fact, without considering the impact his words could carry.

“You are a complex and advanced stage of consciousness to be sure. But even here,” Elijah is turning, reaching into the guts of the GK model, “it was still an act. Mimicry. There’s no biochemical component to it. When I feel joy, when Gavin does, it’s because there has been a chemical change deep, deep in our brains. Same with sadness. Anger. Any conceivable emotion. It’s all serotonin and norepinephrine, dopamine, glutamate. A balancing act between the four if you will.”

His fingers must touch something within the hanging android because there is a resounding click from within the hollow of its chest. Slow blinking life as lights begin to flutter on and off within the hole where Elijah’s wrist is shoved. Blue and watery.

“But with androids,” Elijah continues, “its...its nothing. A program that has learned and mimicked the broken pieces of the human mind. A program. You can’t counterbalance android emotions with a pill, or with any known psychology that helps humans. I’ve tried believe me. It was the first place I turned to.”

The GK’s eyes open. Grey like Gavin’s, the irises seem to spin as it boots to life. It doesn’t have an LED, Gavin realizes. When it activates its skin it will be a triplet to them, the missing link between Gavin and Elijah’s facial features.

“The second place I turned to was robotics, of course. Because at that point I realized I hadn’t made a human, just impersonated one and so the answer would perhaps lie back in his coding. I tested his brain for weeks found an algorithm that seemed counter-intuitive, weeded it out.

“That week he peeled the skin off his own arm in an attempt to physically feel. Unable to understand why he couldn’t. So it was back to the drawing board again.”

“You were disappointed in me,” the GK says. The first words Gavin has ever heard it say. Its voice is not as deep as Elijah’s own, not quite Gavin’s tone either. A bridge between the two. Hubris, Elijah had called it and rightly fucking so.

“No,” Elijah says. “I was disappointed in me. Are you awake?”

“Yes.”

“This is Markus and Connor,” Elijah says. “They’re the androids who helped to spearhead that revolution I told you about.”

It looks at them, eyes passing over both before landing on Gavin. The center of attention once more; its gaze catches Gavin’s and sticks and stays.

“Hello,” it says. And though it is meant to be addressing the other two androids, Gavin knows in his gut it is addressing him. Hello. Fucking hello. “I am sorry I am not more dressed for the occasion,” it says, “Elijah did not inform me we would be having guests.”

Delivered so dry it almost doesn’t translate as a joke. But Gavin remembers how he was in college, that same awkward, not really funny humor. A parody of himself from almost twenty years ago.

“Are you a deviant,” Markus asks. Switching so easily from addressing Elijah to addressing the corpse dangling from the ceiling.

“That’s the word Elijah has ascribed to it. I am me. I am what I am.”

It is what it is. Gavin’s stomach curls uncomfortably. Face too hot, throat too tight. He needs air, needs to be away from all this bullshit. All these new and ill-fitting similarities.

He’s tugging at the collar of his shirt, only half paying attention to the conversation that is still happening around him. Markus asking more questions. The GK model answering them.

It is what it fucking is.

“I was built for negotiation, this is something utterly different,” Connor says, his voice breaking clear through the thick fog of embarrassment around Gavin’s brain. He is frowning, that slightly jaded expression he’s adopted since partnering up with Hank. He is reaching up and out again.

Elijah isn’t quick enough to stop it this time. Or doesn’t want to. Or something.

Connor’s hand catches the GK’s chassis at the opening of the hip. His own skin gone clear and white. Freaky android thought sharing or whatever.

“You shouldn’t—“ Gavin says.

But Connor already has.

For a moment both androids are completely still. Transferring data, Gavin can practically see the bar, download in process. He doesn’t quite understand this turn of events, why Elijah is so blithely allowing this mind meld.

Giving Connor access to its memories. Memories that include Elijah’s dick and Gavin’s weakness. His jealousy. His petty past.

Connor breaks the contact with a gasp a shiver. Stepping back. Off-balance, Markus’ hand comes up to brace him, pressing right at the base of Connor’s spine.

“It’s...it doesn’t feel like anything,” Connor says. He closes his eyes, opens them. Brow furrowed in concentration. Only once does his gaze skim over Gavin, but Connor is clearly too occupied with whatever he was looking for in the GK’s code to be distracted by whatever damning memories he may have seen. “It’s like every other android that we’ve seen.”

“Are you sure?”

“The answer isn’t in the coding, Markus. I’m sure. It has to be something else.”

“It was just a hope that it would be that easy,” Markus says. “Maybe it’s something else that we’re missing. Maybe the origin of the deviation? How was it you came to be deviant, GK?”

The outdated android blinks. White and wraithlike. When it opens its eyes again, cold and grey and accusing, they are focused on Gavin once more.

“I began to love something I could not have,” it says. Elijah palms the back of his neck, looking down at the floor, guilty. Markus’ expression is sympathetic. Connor’s is unreadable. The LED on his temple blurring a slow yellow-orange.

Gavin cannot tear his eyes away from that motion, the seasick blinking. Yellow, yellow, yellow.

Then Connor looks at him. Right at him.

“Oh,” Connor says. Quiet, almost inaudible. A breath that is far too simple for what could come to spell the end of Gavin’s somewhat illustrious career. Oh.

“Are you okay,” Markus asks. Another concerned hand touching Connor’s back. All these casual touches, physical reassurances; Gavin never would have ascribed those traits to an android.

“I’m fine,” Connor says. He has yet to tear his eyes away from Gavin. “Fine. Coming here was a waste of our time, I told you it would be.”

“I’m sorry that I don’t have all the answers,” Elijah says. Hands extended, palm up. “I’m only human after all.”

“It is what it is,” GK says.

Gavin fucking pities it. How very much like him he can already tell that it is. If fell in love, maybe the same way Gavin did, by accident and completely ass over backwards.

“Do you want to come with us,” Markus asks.

The GK smiles, corners of its skinless lips tugging upward, showing its teeth. A self-effacing grin Gavin recognizes from the mirror and his own brother. “Live amongst my own kind, you mean.”

“If you wanted. We will help you any way we can. We want to.”

“All androids deserve their freedom,” Connor says.

GK looks at Gavin, the Elijah, it’s gaze lingers. “It’s your decision,” Elijah offers. Same as he had with the Chloes, touching each one’s shoulder, sincere and open. For once not all pomp and posturing.

“And what do you think, Gavin,” it says.

Gavin starts, shoulders stiffening, twitching. His mouth opens. Closes. “I...I don’t fucking know,” he says. ‘Why are you asking me’, he wants to say, ‘what the fuck does my opinion matter?’ But the words stick in his throat. Uncharacteristically venom-less.

“The decision can only be yours,” Elijah says again.

The GK sighs. It’s remaining arm pulls up in a gesture that would be a shrug if the other arm were present. “I wish to stay then if it’s all the same to you,” it says. And again, again, Gavin can hear his own vocal patterns mimicked in the thing’s speech. The sulking tone he adopts, unable to hide it when his feelings have been bruised. Bad at pretending he isn’t a walking sore spot.

Poor android bastard didn’t even get Elijah’s ability to lie.

“Are you sure,” Markus presses. Staring intently into the GK’s face. Gavin wonders if there’s something else happening here, something he can’t see. He remember footage of the first protest, blurry shots of Markus simply pointing at androids and deviating them. More goddamn robot mind magic.

“He’s welcome to stay here if he wants,” Elijah says. “There’s always been room for him here.”

Connor’s eyes are still on Gavin. Stuck there. Sticking there. A threat all on their own.

“I want to stay,” the GK says again.

“It’s fine,” Connor says, finally looking away from Gavin. “Perhaps Kamski can continue to assess the problem here, and can help you, while Markus and I focus our efforts on those who have brought the problem to us.”

The GK says nothing. Elijah tips his head. “Of course I’ll keep working on a solution. I never intended...well that is I didn’t—“

“I have already forgiven you, Elijah. There isn’t anything more to say,” the GK says.

“We should go,” Connor offers.

“This didn’t feel like a waste of time to me,” Markus says to Elijah. “I thank you for trying to help.”

“To right the wrong you started,” Connor says.

Markus grimaces, but he doesn’t correct him. And Elijah barely even flinches at the accusation. The hubris of man, to think he could create the perfect recreation of life. Maybe he deserves to be called out.

“I’ll show you to the door,” Elijah says. Thank god, Gavin tries not to let his relief show. He takes a breath, releases the tension in his hands. They are leaving, the group of them are leaving this workshop, the androids are leaving Elijah’s home. Gavin’s nightmare is almost at an end.

Except...

“Gavin, would you stay a moment,” the GK says. Gavin hadn’t even been sure that it knew his fucking name. But then again, how could it not. Elijah probably called it that while he screwed it. Would fit the fucked up dynamic between the three of them.

Elijah glances up at it, mouth opening, maybe in protest, but the android barrels over him. “I can shut my own systems down just fine. And I will. After. I want to speak to him privately that’s all.”

“Are you sure,” Elijah asks.

“I think it’s about time, don’t you?”

“About time for what?” Gavin asks.

“We’ll uh. We’ll leave you to discuss it. Come on Markus, Connor, I’ll...I’ll show you the way out.”

Markus nods a farewell to the two of them. Connor doesn’t even bother with that. Plastic prick. But Gavin maybe deserves that too.

Maybe he and his brother are both assholes who deserve every bad thing that happens.

He stares up at the android version of himself, a brother that never existed. He hears the door to the lab shut behind the other three as they leave. For a long, long time, neither of them say anything.

“I thought you had something to say,” Gavin says. It doesn’t come out gruff the way he wants, his voice is shaking just a little too much. His hands are shaking.

“I just wanted to look at you. You’ve changed a lot, you know?”

“Since college? Yeah I bet. You’re actually the same goddamn robot?”

“I am.”

“Never thought Elijah was the sentimental type.”

The GK nods. “He finds it hard to abandon projects he’s invested in. Even failures. One of the reasons CyberLife was so willing to let him go. He’s a genius, but he’s too stubborn for the corporate scene.”

“Did he make you to be me?”

“Not really. He made me to be me. To be...something that he wanted. That just happened to be a lot like you. I’m nicer, I think. From everything he has told me.”

Gavin rolls his eyes. “Yeah well, that’s not that fucking difficult.”

The GK chuckles. The sound, even recorded, echoing from its throat, is surprisingly organic, warmer than Gavin expects. “He didn’t tell you I was here?”

“No.”

The GK nods. 

“Does that hurt your feelings?”

“Do you want it to?”

Gavin bites his lip. “I don’t know,” he says. In a fit of honesty that he doesn’t quite know how to justify, he adds: “I spent a long time hating you...hating the idea of you.”

“I know. Elijah told me.”

“And you love him, right?”

The GK shifts, hanging the way it is, the wires and the hoses clatter and creak. It’s eyes narrow. “Is that what you think,” it says.

Gavin swallows, feels himself mirroring the motion the GK just went through. Straightening his shoulders, planting his feet. “What the fuck kind of answer is that?” He was wrong, clearly, the damn thing got some of Elijah’s bullshit mystique, his goddamn riddles.

“I’m going to shut down now,” the GK says.

“Like hell you are,” Gavin says. The GK’s eyes shut. “Hey, no! Fucking answer me!” He reaches up, grabs the android by the torso and shakes it.

It doesn’t even twitch. Doesn’t even smirk. Shut down. Gone to sleep. Goddamn it.

Gavin meets Elijah halfway back to the main quarters of the house.

“I thought you two might still be talking,” he says.

“Your android me is an asshole,” Gavin says.

“He takes after the best after all. I didn’t build him to be soft.”

“You built it to be me. I thought you said you hadn’t tried to replace me.”

“I hadn’t. I didn’t. Not really purposefully anyway. GK0717-1002 is the product of my ego, I said that. And I guess maybe you’re just...a really good translation of that.”

“Its a smug piece of shit.”

“Yeah. Yeah, well I mean—“

“You’re a smug piece of shit too. Keeping the thing around to fawn over you for years. That’s fucked up.”

Elijah cracks a smile. Nose wrinkling. “Is that what you think I was doing? Keeping him to stroke my own ego?” He touches Gavin’s shoulder, squeezes the muscle. “No. No. He didn’t tell you?”

“Didn’t tell me what?”

“It’s not me that he...he didn’t turn deviant because of his love for me, Gavin. I fucking built him, of course I would have left the program open for him to feel affection for me.”

“You wanted to build a human.”

“Yes. I did. But I also was a horny kid, I may have slipped a code or two in there to make him more open to the idea of romance. Chloes at the time were still strictly asexual. I built him with a specific sexuality, a sensuality if you will, in mind.”

“And it worked.”

“It did. And it didn’t. He loved me, loves me, sure. But, Gav, I’m not—it’s you, you absolute dumbass.”

“What?”

“Jesus. Gavin.” Elijah throws his hands up. Smiling still. Poking fun at Gavin’s expense. “The android I built to love me ended up loving you instead. Narcissism to the highest degree, I must say. But...well to borrow a phrase from your book—“

“It is what it is,” Gavin says.

Elijah’s arms slide around his neck, pull him in for a kiss. “It is what it is,” he echoes.

And it is something they will probably have to deal with. Later. Much later. When Gavin has gotten himself nice and drunk and pliant. Then it’s a conversation he can have, a thought he can handle.

For now he has Elijah.

Which is certainly what it is.

**Author's Note:**

> A million thanks to Erin for this wonderful plot and letting me play around with making Gavin super, super uncomfortable! Hope you enjoy it, dear, and hope everyone reading does as well. As always comments and critiques are welcome! Come talk to me at Vrunkawrites on tumblr if you want!!


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